Technology
While the reader of an ancient past reading this treatise thinking it a game may be used to thinking of technology belonging to the future, each day bringing us, through the diligent efforts of our scientists and engineers, a progressively more advanced world, the known worlds of the fading heavens associate high-end technology with the past. The Grand Republic was the era of humanity’s greatest technological triumphs. Indeed it was partially due to the hubris born from mankind’s command of this perverse knowledge that the pancreator saw fit to visit us with the Symbiots and punish us for our sin. And now we live a life more attuned to not only the soil we till but the souls that burn within us all. And so some noble houses, the league of guilders and even the church have sought to find the artifices of ancient times and bend it to their wills but while they may learn how to operate such ancient engines, they are far from understanding the manner in which ancient man was able to design and build these devices. That is not to say that man does not design and build. Does not the blacksmith forge the ore into plow and nail, hammer and blade? Does not the farmer burn lye to fertilize his field? No, man continues to use those tools the pancreator has deemed to bless him with but they are nowhere near the scale of what once there was. So what can one expect? The average serf toiling the fields has never seen a light-bulb. The closest he has come to an internal combustion engine is the propeller planes of the nobility flying overhead. Refrigeration is unheard of and medicine is limited to herbs and prayer (with prayer being of much greater practicality in almost all cases). Should we travel we would do so by sturdy ox, braying donkey or horse and should we willingly endanger our soul we might board a monstrosity of steel and fire powered by a black stone that burns with the heat of a thousand candles, the steam-ship by water or the rail-balanced train by land. The nobility has shouldered the burden of adopting what knowledges they can, of shielding our souls with their noblesse and so, a noble might have electricity in his estate provided by the rays of the fading sun, the burning of coal, diesel or oil or even the very winds or tides themselves. The nobles might ride upon 2-wheeled mounts they call motorcycles and they might ply the skies in their aero-planes all fed with the distilled oils of the earth and seas themselves. They might spoon chilled icecream from humming refrigerators but they are not armed with laser pistols or monofilament blades like in the days of the republic. Indeed many of the devices could be manufactured (though not all are) by the noble houses themselves though often it is easier and cheaper to sell the resources required to the guilds then purchases the finished product from them. The church’s fiefs are very similar to that of the nobles with the feudal servants protected from the evils of higher knowledge by their noble lords. The situation is different amongst a minority of fiefdoms on Errovus Secondus, especially those associated with the imperium, as well as the great city of Leagueheim. Here one can expect power to hum though miles of copper wire while providing light in the darkness and heat and cold to the homes of the serfs. Communications can be held by talking devices known as telephones and the grainy black and white images of nobility can be perceived on televisions. These are products of the man’s industry when he has forgotten the punishment for hubris. In very rare cases a secluded monastery or dedicated guild-house might have uncovered the secrets of some ancient knowledge and applied their minds and efforts, often at the cost of their very souls, to reproducing the ancient technologies of the long-ago Grand Republic. It is in this way that the shipwright guild can manufacture new flying contraptions to jump from world to world. It is in this way that the imperial garrison produces the amour it equips its grimson legions with. It is in this way that the Orthodoxy produces the fission bombs of greatest destruction. Indeed man has failed to learn from the lessons the pancreator has so patiently taught us and he constantly invites the devils of the space between stars into his heart and mind, aye, even into his very soul by striving to outdo his neighbor with acts of greater and greater technological hubris. It is said that even now the nobles are designing new and greater weapons to split the worlds asunder with anew. 'Cultural Attitudes towards technology' The largest roadblock to scientific advancement isn't the lack of artifacts, but the public perception that these artifacts of higher technology will lead to destruction. This perception is fueled in large part by the Universal Church, who blames technology for the downfall of the Grand Republic. The Church claims that technology in its higher forms (computers, cybernetics, robotics) corrupts one's morality. When human dependence on physical material becomes too great, then humanity forgets the need to cleanse the soul. In large part, the public has adopted this belief and is content with older technologies that do not approach that of the Grand Republic. Scientists, on the other hand, believe that the Church's doctrine is simply a deception that keeps the people in ignorance and the Church in power. Advanced technology still exists in every corner of the Known Worlds, but it often must hide in the shadows, lest the Church declare its users heretics.